master was Spirit. Their master was matter. He served God; they served Mammon.
Jesus endured hardship that he might pour his dear-bought bounty into barren lives; and what was his earthly reward? He was forsaken by all save a few women, bowed in silent woe beneath the shadow of his cross. Peter would have smitten the enemies of his Master; but Jesus forbade him, disdaining artifice or animal courage. He said, “Put up the sword.”
If a life so great and good could not avert a felon's fate, better submit peacefully to human brutality, and enter divine honor through the gate of martyrdom.
His consummate example was for the salvation of us all, through doing such healing works as he did. His purpose was not personal. It was in vindication of his Divine Principle. He was inspired by Life, Truth, and Love. Their motives were pride, envy, cruelty, and vengeance, exercised toward the personal Jesus.
Jesus could have withdrawn himself from his enemies. He had power to lay down a temporal life, and power to take up again his spiritual identity, in the likeness of the Infinite. But he afforded men opportunities to destroy his mortal body, or life, if they could, in order that he might furnish the proof of an immortal body and Life. Nothing could kill this Life of his; but he could give it into his enemies' hands, when his earth-mission was accomplished, and then resume it again. He knew that Life is God, or good, that evil has no Life, and that therefore they could no more separate him from Life than they could extinguish God.
The belief that man has a life or mind separate from God is the error that dies. This error Jesus met with
